Researchers have discovered a new twist to the story of bilayer graphene, solving a mystery that has held back device development. In stacking graphene monolayers, subtle misalignments create an almost imperceptible twist between the layers that can have surprisingly strong effects on electronic properties. Read more...

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ALS Capabilities Reveal How Like Can Attract Like

Berkeley Lab researchers working at the ALS have observed an unusual pairing that seems to go against a universal scientific truth--that opposite charges attract and like charges repel. The researchers demonstrated that, when hydrated in water, positively charged ions (cations) can actually pair up with one another.Read more...

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New ALS User Portal "ALSHub" Rolled Out to Make a Smoother Ride for Users

ALS Beamline Scientist Martin Kunz was recently interviewed for LBNL's daily newsletter Today at Berkeley Lab. The series invites Lab employees to tell a little about themselves and their work by responding to 10 simple questions; read Martin's answers here.

Who's in the News: Visitors and Awards

Veteran ALS user Nora Berrah (left) recently received the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics for "pioneering experiments on the interaction of atoms, molecules, negative ions and clusters with ionizing vacuum ultraviolet and soft x-ray photons." Recent Ph.D. candidate Debajeet Bora (right) received the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) Research Award for his thesis featuring work done on ALS Beamline 7.0. Read more about Nora's and Debajeet's work and their awards...

Speakers and topics include Annette Greiner talking about data visualization, Yi Zhang on current work on Beamline 10.0.1, and Marc Allaire on current research activities on structural biology beamlines. The event will be moderated by Roger Falcone; light refreshments will be provided. For more information, contact
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.

The UEC has already begun planning the fall user meeting, and it is not too early for users to think about their participation in the upcoming event. An official request for proposing workshops will be sent out shortly, but the UEC would love to hear from users now about suggestions for keynote speakers or other ideas for the meeting. This is the users' meeting, and the UEC wants to make it a valuable experience for everyone.

In the meantime, I would like to encourage everyone to fill out their User Satisfaction Survey (end-of-run reports). At the last UEC meeting in February, UEC members decided that they will review these reports with ALS management to see what they can learn about users' experiences and needs.

For the user runs from February 20 to March 17, 2014 (which included two periods of 2-bunch user operations), the beam reliability [(time scheduled - time lost)/time scheduled)] was 95.5%. For this period, the mean time between failures (MTBF) was 42.1 hours, and the mean time to recovery (MTTR) was 128 minutes. On March 8 (during 2-bunch operations), a component failed in the storage ring gradient magnet power supply, which resulted in the loss of 12.6 hours of user beam time

More detailed information on reliability is available on the ALS reliability bulletin board, which is located in the hallway between the ALS and the control room in Building 80. Questions about beam reliability should be directed to Dave Richardson (
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, x4376).